Network resources, i.e., equipment such as line cards, line modules, optical modules, switching fabrics, switching modules, fibers, etc., undergo periodic planned maintenance, which require operator for movement of traffic to other redundant resources before performing maintenance on desired resource. Prior to maintenance, there is no conventional technique to know if movement of all the traffic, i.e., control plane connections, would be substantially hitless. This is known only after performing each operation one by one, after which traffic the traffic would already see a hit. This is because of oversubscription of bandwidth in control plane networks, i.e., just checking whether a protect route is present or not does not indicate whether all connections that are being rerouted will find resources. There are no graceful techniques for locally restoring traffic locally at a node. Conventional techniques include a manual switch of each control plane connection at a network level or movement of resources abruptly allowing the network to re-compute connection paths. For the manual switch, movement of connections before maintenance is a manual operation which requires manual effort, is time consuming, and cumbersome. Abrupt movement of resources, e.g., pulling a module, could result in high traffic hit times. In either case, the operator conventionally does not know if all connections could be restored prior to starting the movement. For example, if it was known in advance that all connections cannot be moved, the operator may choose to reschedule maintenance.
It would be advantageous to automate the process for efficiency and resiliency, i.e., error free with auto movement. As nodes and networks are growing in the capacity of ports, conventional ports support up to 200 Gb/s which has 160 Optical channel Data Unit-0 (ODU0) connections on a single port (or a combination of ODU0, ODU1, ODU2, etc.). Ports are also growing, and support is expected for 400 Gb/s, 500 Gb/s, and beyond, further causing difficulties in moving connections thereon.